1.1.5-Pilferingapples
Brick!club Book 1: Fantine, Ch.5 How The Bishop Made His Cassock Last So Long In Which The Bishop Is Also Comparing Translations Lots and lots of detail on how the Bishop spends his days here. Can’t help thinking, again, how much his sacrifices cost the women living with him— I love my husband, but he’s never asked me to willingly live on warm bread for 90 percent of my diet and I think I might commit a violence if he did. And I guess the sister has her own income to pay for clothes, but what’s Magloire doing? I’d love to know more about why she stays in the employ of this severely ascetic household. Is it pure loyalty? Was it hard for someone in her position to find a new situation? I am GUESSING there will be no real discussion of this in the book, but not having much to go on has never stopped me speculating before! I do wonder about the cassock of the title. If he’s wearing his cloak everywhere to hide his cassock being threadbare, won’t the cloak wear out fast too? What does he use to cover that? I am amused, bouncing between translations as I am, to find the Bishop doing the same thing. I don’t expect to find anything to prompt meditations as Deep Thoughtsy as his, though, since among other things I have a full stomach and rather less piety. But I like his rundown of names for God in his musings; I’ll have to watch and see how often those names turn up in other characters’ mouth, or narrative description, from now on. …And did Hugo just name-drop HIMSELF in this chapter? Oh, Hugo. You are as humble as you are subtle. (sorry for the super late post, y’all. Life was happening.) Commentary Safe-is-relative Never-ending amusement that he name dropped himself. Gascon-en-exile It is indeed a silly self-reference, but the thought of a fictional character leaving behind theological treatises talked of as if they actually existed does add a touch of humorous pseudo-versimilitude that contrasts with the subjectivity of perspective and of narrative in the earlier chapters. Not a century before this it was common practice for novelists to attribute their writing to some other source with them being merely the discoverers and editors of the letters or manuscript or whatever. We’ve got Hugo-the-narrator pointing to a fictional character’s writing on a fictional man that bears his name - yay for comic reciprocity? As I believe someone else already noted, the bishop’s cassock (soutanes) is something like a uniform and symbol of his office, so I’d imagine it’d be more expensive to replace than a common cloak. Magloire partaking in the bishop’s acesticism is undoubtedly supposed to come across as admirable. Let it be known that I made it until the fifth post before mentioning the Amis…because I’d compare it to contemporary reactions to Enjolras’s virginity. What’s extreme deprivation or sexual repression for most readers today is supposed to be indicative of dedication to a higher cause, whether Christian or secular. Of course we don’t have to agree with that assessment in either case, and we’re free to question Magloire’s level of consent in her situation or to have Enjolras engage in all sorts of kinky shenanigans in fanworks. I highly doubt an author as blatantly opinionated as Hugo could have presumed that all his readers would agree with him in every particular. Let’s see, what else…theologically contemplative textual glossing reminiscent of medieval marginal glossing…gardens as emblematic of Eden in Christian symbology (and, furthermore, of the title character of Voltaire’s Candide with his closing axiom “Il faut cultiver notre jardin" - I’m no Voltaire expert, but a shared association of garden work with practical and spiritually uplifting labor?)…yep, Myriel’s still nigh-perfect and Christ-like. Kingedmundsroyalmurder (reply to Gascon) I love the interactions between the author, the text, and the reader in all this. I mentioned the fourth wall in my post for this chapter and I’m still not sure if Hugo is technically breaking it or not, since Hugo-the-narrator is not technically a character despite his frequent interventions and asides. But it’s still cool to see the standard novel format poked at and twisted slightly out of shape.